Kentucky Trivia
July 11, 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker and his men returned to Charlottesville, VA, after exploring the Kentucky Wilderness for the Loyal Land Company. They built the 1st known “house” near Barbourville during their extended stay.
July 11, 1847, American Eclipse passed away at age 34 in Shelby County; he never lost a race when three to four-mile heats were common.
July 11, 1862, Morgan’s Raiders took Lebanon, capturing 200 of the enemy and a large depot of supplies.
July 11, 1892, two hundred blacks, armed with rifles, congregated at the Paducah jail prepared to stop the hanging of a black inmate. The Sheriff gathered a posse of sixty armed white men. The original beef was the hanging of Charles Hill for assault. The black men were at the jail to support Thomas Burgess, a black male, for robberies and assaults. The standoff would turn violent.
July 11, 1920, Patrolman Russell S. Wooten, Hazard Police Department, died after being struck on the head with a heavy piece of timber while attempting to arrest a drunk man.
July 11, 1932, Chief of Police Hoover Hinton, Dwale Police Department-Floyd County, succumbed to gunshot wounds sustained one week earlier while attempting to arrest two men for being drunk.
July 11, 1943, Lorne Eli from Dawson Springs caught a state record white bass in Kentucky Lake weighing five pounds which tied the 1957 catch in Herrington Lake. Lorne has the oldest fishing record out of 64 species.
July 11, 1950, Army PVT William G. Holloway from Jefferson County, Army CPL Simon Terry from Knott County, and Army PVT George Schoulthies from Campbell County, died in the Korean War.
July 11, 1953, Marine Corps 1STLT Samuel T. Stumbo from Lancer in Floyd County died in the Korean War.
July 11, 1968, a long-termed study by government recreation experts recommended that the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River be preserved as a wilderness river – not dammed up by the Army Corps of Engineers for another reservoir.
July 11, 1967, Army PFC Francis A. Hughes from Paris died in the Vietnam War.
July 11, 1968, Marine Corps PFC Edwin Z. Floyd from Lexington, Army PFC Herman D. Roberts from Bowling Green, and Marine Corps PFC Ernest W. Rutherford from Smiths Grove in Warren County, died in the Vietnam War.
July 11, 1970, Glory Kalarama, with Redd Crabtree up, captured the Five-Gaited $2,000 Gran Championship at the Lexington Junior League Horse Show, where 11,000 watched at the Red Mile.
July 11, 1977, former UK Coach Adolph Rupp told the NCAA he would consider it a personal honor if Lexington could host the final four. Governor J. Carroll, UK AD Cliff Hagan, and Lexington officials wanted to pay tribute to the Baron of the Bluegrass. Unfortunately, Coach Rupp died six months later, and Lexington’s Final Four occurred in 1985.
At 6:20 p.m. on July 11, 1980, The Who played at Rupp Arena. They finally returned to the area where the December 1979 Cincinnati concert happened, when 11 young people died while trying to get into Riverfront Coliseum during general admission. In Lexington, at least four undercover police narcotics officers and an estimated 150 off-duty police and private security officers kept the calm. Over 21,000 fans attended, and police reported 40 arrests, mostly on drug charges. Tickets for the show cost $8 to $12.
July 11, 1990, by a vote of 7-4, the Kentucky Board of Education allowed a for profit television channel into the classroom. The state mandated only 2 minutes of advertising for every ten minutes of programming. A Berea board member told the press Kentucky sold the kids out.
On July 11, 1997, the Woodford County Board of Education told students and their families the new High School would not open on time and high school classes would meet in the Woodford Junior High and downtown office spaces. Woodford County newest High School will open for the 2024/25 school year.
July 11, 2000, Kentucky asked the Wild Turkey Distillery to pay nearly a half-million dollars to restock the Kentucky River after a fire in May released thousands of gallons of bourbon, killing thousands of fish. Wild Turkey thought it was excessive and disputed it. They already paid $300,000 to the federal EPA.
July 11, 2006, Louisville native Dan Uggla played 2nd base as a reserve in Major League Baseball’s 77th All-Star game.
July 11, 2012, Dewayne Bunch, who suffered a severe head injury in 2010, passed away. In 2010, he tried to break up a fight at the Whitley County High School, where he taught math and science for 17 years. The injuries also caused him to resign from his seat in Frankfort. His wife won the special election.
Thursday, July 11, 2013, the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall landed near Williamsburg in the Kentucky Veterans Cemetery. The mobile three-fifths-scale replica is six feet tall and 250 feet long and contains more than 58,000 names. The memorial stayed over the weekend.
2:00 a.m., July 11, 2019, police arrested the alleged murderer of Richmond native Savannah Spurlock after they finally found her remains in rural Garrard County near Fall Lick Rd after a long search. She went missing on January 4.